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The program aims to give companies and individuals easy access to information about electricity use.

The Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology has picked HyperTek Inc. to expand the reach of the Green Button Initiative aimed at giving companies and individuals easy access to information about their electricity usage, solicitation documents show.

The requirements of the $175,000 contract are to coordinate with standards developers, give technical advice to companies that want to implement the program and report back to federal agencies.

Once consumers have detailed information about their electricity usage, the theory goes, they’ll do a better job of going green.

The program was inspired by the Blue Button Initiative, another knowledge-is-power program aimed at giving citizens online access to their own health records.